'All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling' – Oscar Wilde

Monthly Archives: July 2015

‘Bring Me Phil Collins’ began life as a silly stand alone poem about nothing in particular. However, it is the seed from which the idea for the Phil Collins Saga grew. I explained it briefly in the introduction for another poem from the cycle that I posted here. ‘Bring Me Phil Collins’ is the introduction to the cycle of poems in which Death calls for Phil Collins to be brought to him.

Bring Me Phil Collins

Bring me Phil Collins he criedPlace him at my feet
With saucy tales his talent is belied
This is a man I would meet

Yes, bring me Phil Collins he criedThrow him to the ground
Forgotten now by popular tide
When once he was renowned

So, bring me Phil Collins he criedBear him to my throne
Too long has my patience been tried
Too long have I sat here alone

Now, bring me Phil Collins he criedStand him in the court
For this is the place he’ll forever reside
As a bean of burden ought

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A couple of years ago, for lent, I set myself the challenge of writing a poem a day. I managed ten before giving up. Most were completely appalling. Desert Dunes was far from the worst but is really really bleak and depressing. Hope you like it.

Desert Dunes

Camel carries on commission
Humps to tackle malnutrition
Deep into the desert dunes
He grumbles and he sighs

Walking through the scorching weather
Camels rarely walk together
Swishing up his bushy tail
He bats away the flies

Humps all sagged, their shape is wrinkled
Every inch of skin is crinkled
With each drop of water left
The wretched camel cries

Far from grass and far from water
Far from Sue, his camel daughter
All alone, and with a choke
Another camel dies

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I’ve always found great enjoyment in films that take the disaster movie idea and turn it into a ludicrous joke. Films like Megashark vs Giant Octopus, Sharknado, and 2012 are hilarious. I wanted to pay tribute to this very special type of film. My idea rapidly became the concept for an epic poem which I am currently working on. This is a story about the Avalarch; Part Avalanche, part Larch. It grows in secrecy in the heart of London, then breaks free to wreak havoc. Eventually, it is defeated but, like all good ridiculous disaster stories, it is soon back to face other monstrous beings.

This post contains part 1 of Avalarch. In this part of the epic poem, we watch strange and mysterious events unfold that lead to the creation of the greatest threat to London since the great fire.

Avalarch Part 1: First Mud

London doesn’t sleep, not quite
The light from every amber lamp
Reflects in fragments from the streets
That sheets of city rain made damp

The moon, half-hid by ashen clouds
Enshrouds the night in mystery
Illuminating hill and pit
A citadel of history

The Thames drifts by with murky grace
It’s face is grey with dirt and dark
A twisted trolley on the bank
Once thankless mule turned steel toothed shark

The ripples on the surface speak
Of bleak disturbances below
The wreckage of the city’s past
Lies fast beneath the undertow

The gentle trickle of the waves
That gravely stroke the crumbling wall
Heard only by the man in black
With sack and shovel as his haul

A crawl across the river muck
Legs stuck and sinking into mire
His hands and face with mud are packed
Though cracked, still like a mask entire

His body weary, aged, grey
A stray dog snuffles at his feet
It paws his leg, it starts to cry
Then finally accepts defeat

He drags himself up ladder rungs
And tongues of rust push through his hands
To taste his blood and slow his climb
From slime and mud and sucking sands

The top achieved, he stops to wheeze
His knees are trembling from the strain
Falls to the ground, his face is red
Then steadily he stands again

His eyes don’t speak so much as shout
A bout of coughing racks his chest
His job long done, he staggers home
To roam no more, at last to rest

A flutter from the traitor’s gate
A stately raven takes to flight
He rides the air with humble skill
A silhouette against the night

Big Ben chimes thrice his sonorous tone
A drone that gently shakes the sky
The bird drops to a window sill
And still the river slithers by

Swollen from the copious rain
It stains the bank with water lines
And laps the footprints in the clay
Erasing these, and other signs

A streak of bright fluorescent green
Here seen just momentarily
A tub of radioactive swill
Is spilling in the estuary

Through eddies, currents, ebb and flow
It slowly dissipates to spread
Some rises to the surface scum
And some sinks to the river bed

It seeps into the ground at last
Drawn past the banks and under soil
Into a garden, trickles through
The beauty bought by gardener’s toil

Exotic flowers, though lately bloomed
Consumed by filth, they wilt and die
But in the garden corner stand
The grand and glorious larches high

The trees succumb to waste and rot
But not the tallest, firm and wide
The dangerous drops through roots drawn in
Begin to change it from inside

This sole survivor drinking deep
While others die putrescently
For hours and days and months and years
It rears on up incessantly

And in due course, the others gone
Drawn on by time’s eternal march
It longs to rise from out the earth
The birth place of the Avalarch

No one would have believed in the first years of the twenty first century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greener than man’s and yet as mortal as his own